Interview

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Rick Goodman (designer of AoE)
Telcontar

Telcontar: There is an option to play a cooperative game with more than one player
controlling the same tribe (one of the highlights of AoE and some other RTS
games). Can I also assign some topics to the computer AI? For instance, it
would be great if I could take care of a battle while the AI continues to
build up my city - or vice versa. Such an assignement should be only
temporary, of course.

Rick Goodman: The computer knows how to ally, but does not like to cooperate.
This was a design decision that makes sense when you weigh the settings
and interface involved with sharing units, research, economy, military,
and temporary assignments etc. This is quite a deep game and it has a
"near zero" intrusive interface. We never want to take you from the
action.

Telcontar: How susceptible will the game be to lag? The matter of latency is of particular
importance for people in Europe (like me).

Rick Goodman: I don't know the technical answer to this question, but we are
testing under the worst latencies the world has to offer. We allow for
2000+ MS latencies. If that is what you are experiencing we can handle
it and we adjust this constantly on the fly, during the game. So, if
the Web speeds up, so will your lag time. You won't be disappointed.

If the game is still playable with 2000 ms latency time, that will be awesome. From Europe, a lag of 1000 ms or more is quite common, and if AoE handles lag that well, it will become very popular in Europe.

Telcontar:
Will there be a "dynamic strategy" that varies as the game goes
on? For instance, if I see that a particular resource type is scarce, I try
to get all or at least the major part of it to deny it to my opponent. If I
see a narrow valley, I try to establish an outpost there. Will the computer
be smart enough to adjust his strategies to the map? Since maps can be
generated randomly, this would be very important.

Rick Goodman: In Age, strategy and tactics are two very different animals.
The computer strategy is determined at game start, based on the map type
and the civilization being played. Much like a human would do. Tactics
are developed as the game unfolds and depend upon the map, resources,
level of difficulty and your level of aggression. These are all done
dynamically, therefore, if you play against Greece on a huge ocean map,
you'll have a completely different game against Greece on a small land
map, including possibly, the deployment of different units, an earlier
attack, many guard towers, possibly Super units and maybe a Wonder
strategy. Even playing on the same map against the same opponent will
challenge you to a completely different set of strategies and tactics
from game to game.

To read more about the difference between strategy and tactics, go to the corresponding page in my strategy guide.

Telcontar: Microsoft is concerned with the marketing of the game, but not with the
production.
Now if MS releases a new operation system, people will sigh in relief
(because they can replace the old one that they have hated so much).
If MS releases a new program, people will grind their teeth (because they
will have to pay once again a lot of money for bugfixes).
If MS releases a game, people will ignore it (because MS
has not released a single good game so far).
So is the fact that the game is produced under the MS label not rather an
obstacle than a help? Do you feel like MS could earn the credits for your
work?

Rick Goodman: It is my belief that Microsoft is the best game publishing
partner in the business. The fruits of this will soon pay off for
consumers because awesome games are the inevitable result of
partnerships with the best in the business. If I told you that we
decided when the game would ship, not Microsoft, would you believe me?

Telcontar:
I have heard of the "Line of Hearing" feature that is already part of
the computer AI. If a unit is attacked, other units nearby will help it.
Will this also be included for human players?

Line of hearing yes, area of hearing no. Easy to do, but
testers considered this a bug since they saw their units being attacked
on the mini map but only sometimes received sound notification.

Telcontar: Why does AoE not feature a production queue so you can give the order to build multiple units?
This is a quite useful and common feature now in RTS games.

Omission of production queues in 'Age' was, indeed, a design decision,
not a programming issue.

'Age' is not just a combat game. Rather, it represents the seamless
integration of combat and economics (resource management, production
etc.) In Age, both are held in equal esteem and that is an important
point. In combat oriented games, the actual production of units can get
in the way of the action. Production queues, allow players to focus
their attention on combat and reduce their attention to economics and
building.

This is not necessarily consistent with the Age design philosophy.

In play testing Age, we have witnessed countless times when a decisive
battle was raging in which both players were faced with a quintessential
decision: Do I leave the battle field to initiate production of
replacement units, or do I stay actively involved in carefully managing
the battle and allow my production to remain idle for a time? This may
at first appear to be a non-significant decision, however, we here at
Ensemble spent many hours analyzing this very point.

Here is what we found:

In the heat of battle, this is not only a difficult decision, but it is
a fun decision as well.

We consistently found that players who actively focus their entire
attention on the battle field win the conflict. This is a tribute to
both the strategy and depth of the game and the subtle and not so subtle
interaction between units. However, managing combat in this fashion
doesn't come without a cost...the neglect of something else. We found
that winning the conflict was not synonymous with winning the game.
What's more, we discovered that sometimes the opposite was true. Those
who manage the business of economics are sometimes as good or better
than those who focus on tactical combat.

Which brings us back around to Age design philosophy.

Age is designed to provide more challenge and more activity than one
player can effectively manage at one time. Maintaining the delicate
balance between economics and combat is one of the key ingredients to
this. As a result, we hope the day will go to the player who is best
able to balance the ever-competing elements of economics and combat.

Rick's view of AoE and strategy games

Personal Experience

This office consists of 20 hard core Warcraft 2 players, with over 8
months of multi player experience. We don't, however, play Warcraft at
all anymore (since January of 1997) when Age became the game of choice.
Not because WC2 is not a great game, it's the greatest and we all
heartily acknowledge and thank Blizzard for their ground breaking
Mega-game. Based on my personal experience, the Warcraft 2 people are
going to be thrilled by Age. It's not the same game, but, instead,
provides the next logical extension of WC2.

MS statistics

Our focus groups show wide acceptance with Age from C&C/RA and WC2
players. It also out ranks them both in numerical scores.

Game design

The vision of the game has always been one that straddles the line
between action and strategy and there are two ways to do this. The
first is to compromise on both, thus, taking away a little of each to
find the middle ground. The second is to acknowledge that both are good
and to find a way to marry both in one game. This is what we have tried
to do in Age. There is more action, more strategy, there are more
units, bigger maps, more cooperation, more technology etc. than in
pervious games of this genre.

Instead of losing the action audience, what we have tried to do is to
create a next generation RTS game. Clearly this next generation game is
going to have more depth than previous generation game. In doing this,
we hope not to leave anyone behind. We are simply trying to provide an
ever-more challenging experience... precisely the one the RTS audience
is asking for.